Teaching Tray Tuesday

We've been trying to create a new schedule to our lives.  It is coming along, slowly.  It's hard when so much depends upon how Julia feels each day and its not just a few days, we still have several months left.  So we move on.  There have been some positive steps so far.  We have had regular school time most days and Carter is now 36 days into his official school year. We have organized all our school stuff and are back in the routine with his assignments.

He has made huge jumps in many of his basic skills- almost over night. Something clicked in his brain recently. He continues to amaze me with his reading, time, money, and math skills.

We have semi-regular times for exercise, storytime, music, and Bible teaching.  We are trying to get back in the groove with chores.  Everything went out the window last spring with her diagnosis, surgery, and recovery.  Carter has picked back up with most of his, but we do not have a regular self-checking system back in place yet.  And we had planned to start with Julia, but that is on hold for a while.  There are many days she doesn't even get out of bed much.  So I'm enjoying a little more time to refine the process we want to use.

We have started doing teaching trays again and the kids remembered exactly what to do when we pulled them back out.  They were really excited to play with it all again.  We finally set up the new shelf to keep them in and it has been working great.  I love the organization.  It makes me downright giddy! :) They use only one tray at a time and must keep all the items together and clean up after themselves.  We sometimes work specifically on these, but I also let them pull them out during playtime if they want.

Julia's skills have definitely progressed since the last time we did these. Her fine motor skills are much more refined and she has much more patience and perseverance. I have to say I know exactly where that came from. God has given her a generous portion of both throughout her cancer journey. The other night before bed she sat and sorted all these animal erasers with chopsticks and only dropped a handful of them.

We have been savoring the cool, fallish weather and getting outside.  I'm a sucker for low humidity, cool breezes, Carolina blue skies, and sunshine- just can't stop smiling! :)  The kids had fun cleaning out the garden.  They love any excuse to play in the dirt :)

We were surprised to find our red pepper plant finally produced peppers! And we just so happen to have a huge red pepper fan in our house who is anxiously awaiting picking time!

Peppers grow from the tiniest little buds- so cute...

The kids love to dig for worms for their garden, too...


Julia has continued to make positive progress this week.  Her pain and irratibility continue to decrease each day and we are thankful to be able to find things she will eat.  Monday she didn't eat.  Yesterday was two bowls of buttery garlic croutons for breakfast, a handful of chocolate chips, and apples and garlic bread for dinner.  Today has been slices of bread.  We're just happy to have found something :)

Well, the little voice is back saying "I want something to eat.", so wish me luck!

Teaching Tray Tuesday

This used to be a weekly feature on our blog and its been a long time since I've added a new post, but we actually did some this past week and have added a few new ones to share. For those of you new to our blog, teaching trays are montessori-inspired activities contained on trays for the kids to explore independently (after initial instructions). I added them to our homeschooling to give the kids new activities to try, to allow them to practice new skills (measuring, pouring, sorting, etc), and to provide prepared activities for Julia to choose from while I'm working with Carter. I usually put out 6 trays at a time for them to choose from. Feel free to go back in the archives if you want to know more. They are cheap, easy, and lots of fun.

These mini erasers came from Oriental Trading and are an assortment of animals and insects. The kids sort them by color, type, similarities, etc.

This one has four colors of mini flowers and mini-flower pots. Sorting with chopsticks works on fine motor skills, too.

These shells are a favorite of the kids just to explore. We wanted to work on math. Julia uses the cards at the top to place the correct number on the card. Carter uses the addition cards at the bottom to place the correct sum on each card.

This tray has been fun and inspired by the time we've been spending in the yard. We've been making a collection of different types of flowers for the kids to explore, dissect, sort, magnify, compare, contrast, and discover.

Teaching Tray Tuesday

I was curious what the kids would think of this one. We bought the funnels on our most recent trip to IKEA and Carter has been begging to use them. I took 4 empty glass baby food jars (same size). Then I cut a piece of electrical tape into strips and marked off fill lines at varying heights. They use a small pitcher to fill the jars and a wooden mallet to tap them. After his first try Carter put them in order from highest to lowest, which he said was also loudest to softest. We also have a sponge for spills. Julia loved it just as much when she tried it after her nap.
This idea came from a preschool teacher we know. We have been saving the foam for a long time and I let Carter play with it when Daddy is working in the garage. I never thought to move it indoors until I saw it on someone's blog. This was a big hit. The kids loved getting their Handy Manny tools in on the action :)
We pulled out the bean tray again this week after we got new set of child-size kitchen tools at IKEA. One of their favorites is actually the tea pincer spoon infuser. (I looked that one up. I just knew you put tea leaves in it.) They love to squeeze the handles and scoop almost anything- beans, toys, dinner...

Teaching Tray Tuesday

This is one of the kids' favorites. They both love to play with cars- working, arranging, driving, etc. Throw in rice and suddenly it's wonderful! They scoop, plow, dig, make roads, etc. Have a dustbuster or kid-size dustpan available at the end to help with clean up :)

This is a very simple activity, but surprisingly soothing. All you need is an empty creamer container and popsicle sticks. The kids pop the lid open and drop them in, then dump. You can also store the sticks in the container and make it portable. Great restaurant entertainment for an antsy toddler :)

This has been a really neat activity for all of us. Carter loves his map skills workbooks and one day while we were working on 'perspective' I thought of trying this. (I also just love playing with these and wanted something to do with them :) I bought 2 packs of acrylic cubes (they sell them with the flower decorating supplies). Then I made puzzle cards from cut-out paper squares. The cards range from basic to more difficult. The kids have to copy the image (learning to convert from two-dimensional to three-dimensional). For Carter we also work on perspective, translating both literally and from an overhead ("map") view.

Teaching Tray Tuesday

It's Tuesday, so here are three more trays.....

I love these half-sheet cupcake pans. They are just the right size for so many things (I know a lot of people feed their kids lunch in these once a week. A great way to get them to try new things. You can also revolve the foods around a color or theme of the day.) Both the kids love to sort. We have two containers to sort- one with 6 kinds of pasta and one with 6 kinds of beans. We also move beyond the obvious and sort by size, color, type, etc.
This is one of their favorites. It's just a tray full of beans to pour, scoop, dump, pretend to cook, etc. It's amazing how much fun they have with this and the things they think of to play.
I'm not sure what the fascination is, but kids love to drop things into slots. We used empty Gerber Graduate containers and poker chips for this one. They sort, drop, estimate, and count them.

Teaching Tray Tuesday

It's Tuesday, so time for some more tray ideas. If you missed last week I explained the hows, why, whats of this and gave examples of four of them. So this week I'll add three more.
(I also want to make a quick note and say. If you decide to do these its helpful to find someone else who is interested and then you can divide your materials in half.)

This one is pretty self-explanatory. We bought an assortment bag of three sizes of rainbow colored pompoms. The kids use the tongs and chopsticks to sort them by color, size, etc. into the paint palette or the 6 cup muffin tin.
This idea I saw at a science museum. Start with an even number of empty (same-size) medicine bottles (they need to be childproof). I chose 12 because that is exactly what fits in an empty wipe container- easy storage. Wrap them in contact paper so you can't see into the bottles. Using two colors of dot stickers divide them in half. Fill the containers with small items that will make noise when shaken. We used rice, beans, coins, marbles, buttons, cereal, and nails. Fill them so that one of each color match. Be sure to fill with the same amount because the quantity affects the sound. Then the kids hake them and find matches (one red with one blue). This activity is basically self-checking. (If you needed to check you can look at the bottom, but don't let your kids do this- cheating's no fun.)

We also started working on liquid measure today. I tinted the water with a tiny drop of food coloring so they could see it rise up the dropper. I did a quick demo of how to draw up water and how to squeeze gently to adjust the amount. We used a plastic condiment cup for the water (Walmart), a Wilton palette (wells are deeper and the white color makes it easier to see), and a sponge for self-cleanup. Both the kids loved this activity. Julia was very patient and filled all the wells, then took the time to transfer all the water back to the cup using the dropper. (I like for them to leave the trays as they were found.) Carter liked it, too. We worked on specific quantities with him, using the mL measure. It was a great lesson in volume, exact measure, and indirectly- subtraction.

Teaching Trays Tuesday

I have never considered myself a follower of Montessori- as a teacher or parent- but it apparently has grown on me.

Julia is wanting to get more involved when we have school time. There are some activities she can do with Carter- and I have two shelves with materials just for her- but I've been trying to come up with some contained activities that will be new to her, somewhat challenging, and let her learn something in the process. When I saw the Tot Trays on the Totally Tots blog, I thought 'this is it'. We can make this work. Essentially they are Montessori-inspired activities arranged on self-contained trays that can be used for direct instruction or independently by the child. They are great for a wide span of ages and make so much sense for us with a 2 and 5 year old. So I browsed some blogs like this and this for inspiration and put together a list of 33 that I liked- as well as a few of my own. They are so easy to put together. I tried out two of them with the kids on Friday and it was a huge hit, so I decided to put it all together. I have a large Sterilite tub that holds all the materials for the trays. You can use actual trays or cookie sheets/pans for the activities. We arrange ours in one of the 6 cube shelves they sell everywhere. You can have them available to your kids all the time and vary the activities or only put them out at certain times. I am amazed how inexpensive (and fun) putting all this together has been. I started this past weekend and have put together 22 of the 31 for under $40 and by the time I'm finished I will have spent less than $50. There are so many things you can do for free or almost free. Here is one of my all time favorites...........

Pick up two sheets of several different colors of paint swatches. Using a glue gun, attach a swatch to each clothespin. You can use the extra to make mixed color cards (like the white square in the picture). The kids have to match the colors and clip them to the cards. This teaches color discrimination, attention to detail, and develops fine motor skills in squeezing the clothespins. To make it more challenging for older children, add different tones of the same colors. We have two blue cards of different tones. (I also attached the swatch cards to cardstock, with hot glue, to make them a little heavier) This only costs 67 cents for half a bag of clothespins plus one stick of hot glue!!!!

This next one is a great life skill, math lesson, and fine motor activity teaching dry measure (and you probably have this stuff lying around anyway) This way the kids can gets lots of practice at once instead of just the two or three times when you make a recipe.........

I love this next one, too for practicing shapes- and its virtually free! Using popsicle sticks, write the words 'triangle', 'square', 'pentagon', and 'octagon' on the corresponding number of sticks. Using markers make matching dots for each shape set. The kids assemble the shapes by matching the dots and at the same time learn the number of sides, corners, and the shape names. This was perfect for us because we have been working on the difference between hexagons and octagons. As they get older you can add 'heptagon, 'nonagon', 'decagons', 'dodecagons', etc.......
And this is something I had never seen before, nor even thought of- but lots of fun. Using a spice/cheese shaker (Garden Ridge) and dry spaghetti. The kids have to fill all the holes. If nothing else, this one definitely works on patience and task endurance.......
You should introduce the available activities to your kids and let them choose which to do. They work at each independently. There is opening of containers, arranging, and cleanup involved with each and is actually part of the process in teaching kids to be independent and responsible. They should be instructed to keep all items on the tray (the best they can) and have a dust buster and kid-sized dustpan available for cleaning up if needed.

I'll post more pictures and instructions next Tuesday. If anyone wants the complete list, please feel free to email me :)